Religion: Exodus from Brooklyn

"It is said of a certain Talmudic master that the paths of heaven were
as bright to him as the streets of his native town," wrote Martin Buber
in The Way of Man. "Hasidism inverts the order: It is the greater thing
if the streets of a man's native town are as bright to him as the paths
of heaven." For nearly 40 years, the majority of Hasidic Jews in the
U.S. have sought to make paths of heaven out of the streets of a grimy
corner of New York City: the Williamsburg section of...